Integrated planning and execution control of autonomous robot actions

The authors describe an implemented integrated system allowing a mobile robot to plan its actions, taking into account temporal constraints, and to control their execution in real time. The general architecture has three levels, and the approach is related to hierarchical planning: the plan produced by the temporal planner is further refined at the control level, which in turn supervises its execution by a functional level. The framework of the French Mars Rover project VAP is used as an illustration of the various aspects discussed